I obtained this from.... hmm, I don't know. Likely my grandparents, but no interviewer is indicated on the copy I have. This is a transcript from my copy and the photos were inserted by me to illuminate the story a bit more.
Photos are from the personal albums of Clayton Huber and Rhea Huber Merkley.
The first recollection I have is when I was a baby with curls, and I must have had curls until I was about four years old. I can remember one incident when Vern Probst came over to play with me and we did something wrong and mother took the dish rag (that was one of the weapons she used.) Instead of hitting me, she hit Vern. Vern felt pretty bad about that.
Little Leroy Huber... aww....
After I got five or six or seven, I was quite husky and fat and they gave me the nickname of "Fat" and I had that nickname for years and years until I came out to the Uintah Basin. After I got old enough to work we would always go to the ranch in the summer after we got the work done at our little farm. We would go up to the ranch and help Joe and Neph herd sheep, milk cows, tend the fish in the fishing pond, and herd pigs. I can remember one time the pigs kept getting in Brother Summer's field. Grandpa told me one time that if I could herd the pigs out of that field, he would give me twenty cents. I did herd them out and ran my legs off but never got the twenty cents pay.
Labeled as "Huber Milking Corral"
When we were at the ranch, Aunt Ida and Joe were quite the teasers. I had an inferiority complex and when they would tease me about anything I didn't like, I would slide under the table. They always teased me about that too. Grandmother was one of the most wonderful women that ever lived. She was kind and never laid a hand on the kids no matter what they had done. She would just say a word in German to scold them. Uncle Joe was one of the most princely guys (that) ever was around. He never would scold you if you did anything wrong.
In those days, money was very scarce. I can remember we would work in the neighbor's hay fields for a dollar and a half a day. I can remember one time we loaded and delivered potatoes for two days and received a five or six dollar bag of sugar. During the summer my dad and I would go up Snake Creek Canyon and get dry pine trees. Then we would saw them up and make cordwood out of them and sell them to the limekiln. That would be how we made our pin money.
The summers at the ranch were some of the most happy ones in my childhood. Nearly every summer all the aunts and children would come to the ranch for their vacation. Most of the time Dean, Frank, and I would have to work in the hay fields. We resented that because Vern and the other boys could play with the other kids all that they wanted. They just had to work when they wanted to. When we became teenagers and went to high school, we had a teenage gang. What game, trick, or mischief that one person didn't think of, someone else would. I remember Joe had a team and a buggy and when he came down we delighted in borrowing his team and taking all of the kids for a ride.
Roy tilling a field
In the grade school I was kind of shy but I always got pretty good marks. We used to have to ride to Heber in the cold in an overcoat. I remember I got so discouraged about riding over to Heber in that cold weather that I quit high school. That was a mistake. The principal came over and my parents tried to talk me into going back but I never did. After that I did get one semester at Utah State. Floyd Bonner, Neph Haueter, and I batched it. Herb, Joe, and Nephi Probst lived about a block away and we had some real wild times.
The only place that you could earn a dollar was in the mines. Dean and I went in November to work in the Cardiff mine. When we got there we only had fifteen cents. We worked there until April and we had all of our checks left except the first one. We had cashed the first one to buy postage stamps. We thought we were really in the money. When we got home all of our checks didn't last long. We went dancing and imbibed a little wine and beer. After that I remember I worked for Uncle Alex at the Reed's peak. Aunt Liza was the cook and she made some wonderful dried apricot pies. Being away from home I got homesick and I walked up the head of Cottonwood Canyon and down to the ranch. Elmer Dutch was running the place and he took me back on horseback. I worked in Lake City, Colorado, with a bunch of fellows from Midway and Park City.
Park City Mines (taken from an online source through Google images)
The word had gotten around that the Mormons were coming and they were planning on driving us out. We had two or three pretty tough miners with us and they offered to take them all on. We had been working there seven months and Dude Wilson and I were getting tired of mining so we took a tour of Denver and Cheyenne and we even had enough money to get to Evanston, Wyoming. We got a job in a steady outfit herding sheep. We had only been there about three weeks when Dude Wilson got his call for the army. We put together our earnings and he went home. I worked there a month or two and didn't want to go on in the summer so I quit and went home. Very shortly after that I was called to the army. It wasn't long after I got out of the army that my Dad died. After he died I ran the ranch for a year or two. I decided that I didn't like that and got a job out at the Park Utah Mine and Dutch took over the farm. After a year of mining in the winter of 1922, I took a visit to Lapoint. Frank was feeding cattle out there for W.K. Johnson and hay was three dollars a ton. He got three dollars for feeding and that shows the difference in prices that hay is today.
World War I photo of Roy (on right) and unknown buddy... handsome little devil that Roy was...
Roy's family: parents Henry Albert & Margaretha on far left. Brothers Elmer & Frank seated in front. I assumed Roy was the one clear in the back, but he looks younger than the boy in front of him (who should be his younger brother, Dean.) SO, I may need some more clarification on that...
To be continued in: Life History of Roy Huber- PART TWO
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